Mal stood at the phone, counting the rings. On the tenth, he jammed his thumb on the cradle button, breaking the connection, and dialed another number. Pearl wasn’t at home. Maybe she was at that crummy bar again.
She wasn’t. The bartender recognized his voice and told him no, Pearl wasn’t there. It irritated him that the bartender recognized his voice. He’d been relying on Pearl too much, he should get hold of something else.
It occurred to him that she might be at the hotel, waiting for him, not knowing that he’d moved, or that at least he could leave a message for her there at the desk. But the hell with it. He wanted something else, something good. Like that blonde of Phil’s.
He hesitated, almost calling the Oakwood Arms anyway, but finally dialing a different number. A woman answered, a woman with a husky cigarette-raw voice, and he said, “Mal Resnick, Irma. I could use a girl.”
“Couldn’t we all, honey? What’s your price range?”
“I want something good, Irma,” he said, visualizing what he wanted. “A blonde, something really good. For all night.”
“Mal, honey,” she said, “it’s been a while since you called. There’s been something I’ve wanted to say to you.”
“What?”
“The envelope, honey. The last two girls complained to me. There wasn’t enough in the envelope.”
He laughed, feeling not at all like laughing. “What the hell, Irma, discount to a fellow worker in the Outfit, right?”
“Wrong, honey. The girls got to make a living too. They got their price, they want to stick with customers who pay the price, you see what I mean?”
Mal was in no mood to argue. “All right,” he said abruptly. “All right, all right. I’ll pay a hundred cents on the dollar. Satisfied?”
“Rarely, honey. Now I asked you, what price range?”
“I told you what I wanted. A blonde, something really good. Young, Irma, young and stacked.”
“You are talking about a hundred dollars, honey.”
Mal frowned and gnawed his lip, then nodded convulsively. “All right,” he said. “A hundred. For the night.”
“What else? You’re at the Outfit, aren’t you?”
“No, I moved. The St. David on 57th Street. Room 516.”
“You want to take her out to dinner, a show, anything like that?”
“I want her here, Irma. In the rack, you follow me?”
Irma laughed throatily. “An athletic blonde,” she said. “She’ll be there by eight o’clock.”
“Fine.”
Mal hung up, and turned around to face the room, but there wasn’t any bar in it. Thirty-two dollars a day, and no bar. He turned back and called room service. Two bottles, glasses, ice. They’d be right up.
It was barely seven o’clock. He had an hour to kill. He paced the room, disgusted. A hundred dollars for a lay: that was disgusting. Parker coming back from the dead: that was disgusting. Getting screwed up this way with the Outfit: that was disgusting. Even the room was disgusting.
The room was one of four. He wasn’t sure what had made him do that, splurge on a four-room suite costing thirty-two dollars a day, any more than he was sure why he was throwing away a hundred dollars on a broad who couldn’t possibly do any more for him than Pearl would. And who would, probably, since they would be strangers, do even less.
But he had splurged, reason or no reason he had splurged, on the girl and on the suite. Knowing that neither could be worth it.
The suite, for instance. This living room. It was old. The paint was new, the furnishings and fixtures were new, the prints on the walls were new, but beneath it all the room was old, and in the way of hotel rooms the oldness managed to gleam dirtily through the new overlay. And besides being old, it was impersonal. The suite at the Outfit hotel was bis, it was where he lived. This suite wasn’t lived in by anybody, now or ever, any more than a compartment in a Pullman car was lived in. It could be occupied, but it couldn’t be lived in.
The girl would be the same way.
He was doing things wrong, he was making stupid mistakes, and what made it worse was the fact that he knew it. The knowledge that Parker was alive had rattled him more than he liked to admit. Going to Mr. Carter, for instance. He’d gained nothing, and maybe he’d lost.
Now Mr. Carter was watching him. Now he had to get Parker, not just avoid him but get him. This was a test and the Outfit was watching, and if he failed now he was through forever. This time he was too far up the chain of command to just be put out in the street. This time they would have to kill him.
He had to work alone. If he hadn’t gone to Mr. Carter, he could have used some of the boys in his group, even given one of them the assignment of finishing Parker. Now he’d screwed up that chance, too. He had to work alone.
Stegman wouldn’t find Parker, he knew that. Stegman couldn’t possibly find Parker. It was up to him, completely up to him.
Suddenly he stopped his pacing, struck with an idea. There was a way to use the Outfit. It was dangerous as hell, but he could do it. He’d have to do it. There wasn’t any other way.
He hurried across the room to the telephone and quickly dialed a number. When Fred Haskell answered, he said, “Fred, I want you to pass a word around for me.”
